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THE EU and AZERBAIJAN: BEYOND OIL Jana Kobzova and Leila Alieva

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THE EU and AZERBAIJAN: BEYOND OIL Jana Kobzova and Leila Alieva MEMO POLICY THE EU AND AZERBAIJAN: BEYOND OIL Jana Kobzova and Leila Alieva The European Union has been partly successful and wholly SUMMARY Azerbaijan poses the greatest challenge to the incoherent in promoting democracy in its neighbourhood. EU’s attempts to promote democracy in the Europeans paid lip service to democracy in North Africa and Eastern Partnership region. The regime of the Middle East, but for years they downplayed values when President Ilham Aliyev has almost eliminated dealing with the region’s autocratic regimes. Last year’s political opposition through a combination democratic uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East of state repression and election manipulation – which had little to do with the EU’s democracy assistance and has harassed independent media. But the or political conditionality – pushed several of the region’s EU has struggled to go beyond co-operation authoritarian leaders from power. But in the EU’s eastern on energy issues and put more pressure on neighbourhood, democracy is in retreat: none of the six the regime to liberalise. Azerbaijan has no aspirations to join the EU, which limits the Eastern Partnership countries is fully democratic and, apart EU’s leverage. However, in the medium term from in Moldova, democracy scores in the region have been 1 the Aliyev regime is more vulnerable than worsening. Clearly, EU efforts to promote democracy are it seems: unless it reforms and diversifies, failing to work as intended. Azerbaijan’s economic model is unsustainable. Nowhere in the eastern neighbourhood is this challenge The EU should revise its current condition- more evident than in Azerbaijan. The upcoming Eurovision free approach towards Baku and follow a “hug Song Contest, which takes place in Baku on 22–26 May, and hold” strategy – that is, hug Azerbaijan has drawn attention to the many problems and paradoxes but also hold it to its commitments to reform. this country presents for the EU’s efforts to promote The EU should support transfer of know-how, democracy. The regime of President Ilham Aliyev harbours exchange programmes and capacity-building in the public sector while re-directing more no aspirations to join the EU and is confident enough to political and financial support to grassroots ignore most of the EU’s pleas to fix the country’s democracy groups, SMEs and independent media who can put more pressure on the regime. Unless the EU takes this bolder approach towards 1 Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine are described as “hybrid regimes”, and Armenia as a Azerbaijan, it risks finding itself in the same “semi-consolidated authoritarian regimes”. Belarus and Azerbaijan joined the group position it was in the southern neighbourhood of “consolidated authoritarian regimes”. See Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2011, available at http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/nations- before the Arab Awakening: that of a quiet transit-2011. See also Nicu Popescu and Andrew Wilson, Turning Presence into Power: the EU in its eastern neighbourhood, European Council on Foreign Relations, supporter of autocrats. May 2011, available at http://ecfr.eu/content/entry/turning_presence_into_power_ europe_in_its_eastern_neighbourhood. deficit. He has almost eliminated political opposition through However, as the country has progressed in economic terms, a combination of state repression and election manipulation, it has regressed in terms of corruption and democratic and has harassed independent media. In the run-up to the governance. The influx of oil money has helped the regime Eurovision Song Contest, hundreds of Baku citizens were of Ilham Aliyev – who succeeded his father Heydar Aliyev in forcibly evicted from their homes, which were demolished to 2003 in what has been the first dynastical transfer of power build the Crystal Hall where the competition will take place.2 in the former Soviet republic – to solidify his own position and strengthen and feed the system of political patronage Azerbaijan has often used its difficult geographical and he inherited. Ilham Aliyev further consolidated power geopolitical context as an excuse to tighten the political in the presidency and steered Azerbaijan towards a full- screws. The country is blessed with hydrocarbon riches fledged autocracy. There are at least 12 political prisoners but cursed by its location in what is probably the most in Azerbaijan today and the political opposition has been combustible region in Europe. To the north, it borders almost eliminated. The main television channels are Russia, which, apart from having a radar station on controlled by the government and journalists are regularly THE EU AND AZERBAIJAN: BEYOND OIL Azerbaijan’s territory, is also one of the main sources of the threatened. Investigations into the deaths of two opposition radical Islamist groups that are currently operating in the journalists who died in 2005 and 2011 have produced no country. To the east, Armenia is still technically at war with results and independent media are regularly harassed.5 Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh; Iran, in which 20–30 million Azerbaijanis continue to live, When Azerbaijan won the right to host this year’s Eurovision is also a difficult neighbour. Azerbaijan’s only two “good Song Contest, many in Europe hoped that it would prompt neighbours” are Georgia and especially Turkey. the Aliyev government to moderate its actions in order to avoid tarnishing its international prestige. The hopes were The EU is now trying to put democracy back at the heart of not entirely ungrounded: a year before the competition its foreign policy. But while it has taken a tough approach to was to take place, the journalist Eynulla Fatullayev was Belarus – another systematic abuser of human rights in the released from jail.6 The blogger Jabbar Savalan also Eastern Partnership region – it seems more concerned about received a presidential pardon in December 2011. But the its own energy interests and security in Azerbaijan than government has been taking one step forward and two for the state of democracy there. Although they have been steps back: despite progress on these high-profile cases, the vocal about democracy in Azerbaijan, individual member overall human rights situation is worsening. Opposition states and the EU institutions have in reality co-operated activist Elnur Mecidli was pardoned a week before the with the regime in Baku without imposing conditionality. Eurovision Song Contest but 12 others who remain in This conditionality-free approach has brought Europe few prison have gone on hunger strike. Two journalists have benefits and continues to discredit the EU in the eyes of remained in detention since March this year and have been Azerbaijani society. Without adjusting its relations with this prevented from communicating with their lawyers. Khadija oil-rich country, the EU risks repeating the same blunders it Ismayilova, an investigative journalist, has been the target has made in its southern neighbourhood in the past. of a smear campaign since she published articles unearthing corruption at the heart of the president’s family. The Baku authorities continue to deny applications of the opposition A more confident – but vulnerable – Baku to hold rallies in the city centre on a systematic basis. In the early years after its independence in 1991, Azerbaijan However, in the medium term, the regime is more vulnerable was as poor as its other two Caucasus neighbours Armenia than it seems. The volume of oil extracted in Azerbaijan and Georgia.3 But since the mid-1990s, the government peaked in 2010 and is set to decline. In 2011, the country has gradually managed to absorb the shocks of transition recorded the lowest economic growth among all the former and the war with Armenia, restarted economic growth and Soviet republics.7 Although it lived through 10 boom years, expanded the society’s welfare. This was chiefly thanks to the government has failed to translate the growth figures the country’s rich oil and gas reserves, new contracts with into corresponding social indicators: for example, in 2008, Western energy companies and high oil prices. As a result, when GDP grew at a rate of 10 percent, inflation reached Azerbaijan’s fortunes, especially in the last 10 years, changed 21 percent. Moreover, the government has paid little www.ecfr.eu impressively: the country’s poverty rate dropped from a attention to rising social injustice. Because Azerbaijan’s staggering 45 percent in 2003 to nine percent in 2010, and political and economic system is based on rewards for its real GDP increased threefold between 2003 and 2008, 4 recording unprecedented growth of 34 percent in 2006. 5 Elmar Huseynov, the founder and editor of the opposition weekly news magazine Monitor, was gunned down in his apartment building in Baku in March 2005. Rafiq Tağı, a journalist for Sanat newspaper, was assassinated in November 2011. 2 See Human Rights Watch, “They Took Everything From Me”, 29 February 2012, 6 Fatullayev was imprisoned in 2007 on charges of defamation, terrorism, incitement May 2012 available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/02/29/they-took-everything-me-0. of ethnic hatred, drug possession and tax evasion, which were widely believed to be 3 See, for example, Statistical Handbook 1995 – States of the Former USSR, fabricated and motivated by Fatullayev’s journalism. He was released almost a year World Bank, available at http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/ after the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights that he should be released. WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/1995/12/01/000009265_3970311123523/Rendered/ 7 In 2010, Azerbaijan produced 51 million tons of oil; in 2011, it produced five million PDF/multi0page.pdf. tons less. In 2012, production is expected to reach 46 million tons. Azerbaijan’s ECFR/57 4 Gubad Ibadoglu, “Azerbaijan’s Economic Model and Its Development Since GDP growth in 2011 amounted to 0.1 percent.
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